President’s Message

April 14 is the date of the NCUU Annual Meeting, and all are encouraged to attend if you are able since we will be voting on some important issues in addition to a board president and new board members. As Holly pointed out in her announcements, voting Members who are unable to attend can request an Absentee Ballot from the Secretary, Kimberly Brost. Among the matters to be voted on are approval of the proposal to form a search committee for the possible recruitment of a quarter time minister. Jean McCauley has distributed to all voting members by mail a copy of the proposal that must be approved by the congregation before a search can be launched. Once a suitable candidate has been identified, a two thirds majority of the congregation must approve that candidate before an offer can be made. Funds from the generous bequest left to NCUU by Mary Louise DeWolf for the sole purpose of supporting a ministry will be used to fund the position.

As most of you know from announcements posted by Holly Alexander, NCUU will hold a book sale 10 AM to 4 PM Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27 at the church. Thanks to a bequest from the late Scott Forbes, one of NCUU’s founders, we recently inherited a sizable library that we do not have enough space to accommodate. The books are in excellent condition, most new, some rare. Topics include fiction (novels), art, politics, science (including environmental science), history, classics, philosophy, geography, anthropology, archeology, religion and more. The sale is open to the public and Shirley Leonard has prepared an announcement for the Citrus Chronicle. Members and friends are invited to contribute books to the sale. Representatives of school and public libraries are welcome. Books will not be priced. Visitors and members are invited to take what they believe they might read and leave what they consider to be an appropriate donation on their way out. All proceeds will benefit local charities.

As our weather warms over the months ahead, coastal threats will grow. If you live west of US Hwy 19 or in other low-lying areas, I urge you to pay close attention to weather forecasts and warnings because you may be vulnerable. Rising sea temperatures are the main cause of increasing storm intensities, sea level rises, torrential rains, and coral bleaching. Sea temperature anomalies in late summer last year reached record highs throughout the northern hemisphere and temperatures are predicted to exceed those records this coming summer. For any of you who may want to know more about how climate change is impacting coasts, I refer you to a brief and non-technical review article that a colleague and I published in Journal of Marine Science and Engineering about six months ago (October 2023). The link is https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11101997. This article is open access, and you can download the pdf at no cost. Just click on the link above to open the article and then click on the button labeled “Download”. It will probably go directly to your download folder in case you can’t find it.

Namaste,
Don Wright